I originally learned about Foundr Magazine from a Kickstarter campaign of theirs (link), and last week I saw a Facebook ad of theirs hawking an Instagram webinar. Damn hyper-targeting.

To tell the truth, I’m a great troll on social media, but I have no clue what I’m doing on Instagram. So I figured that even if I learned absolutely nothing in the webinar, I’d at least have something funny to review.

Initial Impressions

Nathan Chan isn’t a raging douchebag, thank god. On some webinars, the instructors will promise riches, fancy cars, and big houses in the Cayman Islands. Nathan didn’t take that angle, which is refreshing. As is customary with webinars, he shared his story with Foundr Magazine, but did so appropriately and in a humble fashion.

The webinar had a compelling value proposition. Although the point of the webinar was to teach us how to grow our Instagram follower base, what really grabbed my attention was Nathan casually mentioning that Foundr used Instagram to grow their mailing list from 3,000 to 200,000. As it happens, this was also what they led with in their Facebook ad (above).

Unfortunately, they didn’t really follow up on that during the webinar, but it definitely got my attention and gave me the impression that they were actually able to tie Instagram to actual ROI. One thing I do know is that out of all the social media channels, Instagram is notoriously hard for brands to convert into dollars.

Useful Takeaways

Despite the fact that the webinar mostly presented Instagram basics, this would have been pretty informative for people who were new to using the platform for business (like me).

It did bring up one interesting fact from a conversion standpoint: the link in your bio is the only working link in your account, so it’s the only externally-pointing call to action you have. Perhaps this is obvious to people familiar with Instagram, but I thought it was highly relevant from a conversion and ROI perspective.

Nathan also suggested some analytics and content creation tools (such as Iconosquare), so that was another helpful value-add.

What’s being sold?

Obviously, the goal is to sell people on their “Instagram Domination” course. I was actually considering signing up (to review it of course), but shit my pants when I saw the price tag ($1,997). Even with a discount offered to webinar participants, it was way too steep. Jesus Chriiiist.

Overall, not a waste of an hour, I guess. Props again to Nathan for not being a douchebag and talking about how rich he is, and how rich we can be too if we just buy his course. The webinar was business-focused, fairly helpful, and professional… what a breath of fresh air.